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Short-track skating is faster and tighter
By Maria Titze
Deseret News staff writer
It's still the kid brother of a better-known winter sport.
Elegant, flowing strokes around a big, oval track? No, that's long-track speedskating.
Celebrity spectators Dan Jansen and Bonnie Blair? No, those are long-track Olympic stars.
"Not many people know this, but Bonnie was a short-track world champion before she did long-track," said Andy Gable, short-track project manager for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.
Short-track speedskating is the one where the athletes don kneepads and helmets, as well as slick, skintight suits and hoods.
They also wear gloves with hard plastic balls on the fingertips to slide along the ice, because the skaters go so low on turns, they often put their hands down for balance.
Short-track is relatively new to the Olympics, making its debut as a demonstration sport at the Calgary Games in 1988.
It's a shorter, tighter contest than its sibling event, held on a 111-meter track created by placing markers on a hockey or figure-skating rink.
Race distances range from 500 to 3,000 meters for individuals and 3,000 to 5,000 meters for relays.
Short-track speedskaters race against each other, in packs, not against the clock. And there are no defined lanes.
"I think that's why when people see it, they love it," Gable said. "It's not hard to understand. It's fast, it's exciting and it's fun to watch." The first international short-track speedskating event in Utah was held three years ago, a small-scale event between U.S. and Canadian skaters that drew little public attention.
Two years ago and last year, the Peaks Ice Arena played host to the World Cup. (For the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games, short-track speedskating will be contested at the Delta Center, which is also the venue for figure skating.) The 1999 World Cup competition was the first major international short-track event in Utah and drew more than 100 athletes from 20 participating countries.
And there was a fair amount of public interest, Gable said.
"I think (the first year) we tried to focus on the technical aspects of putting on a competition," he said. "We didn't want to have to be caught up in too many things. We could train the volunteers that way." Last year, local organizers pulled out all the stops.
It helps that the locals — eager for a preview of the upcoming Winter Games — are becoming familiar with the sport's top athletes.
Apolo Ohno has been a darling of the crowd.
The 18-year-old from Seattle is America's best hope for Olympic gold in 2002
Ohno, who has built on his beginnings as a talented in-line skater in his early teens, is the youngest ever U.S. Short Track Champion.
U.S. coach Susan Ellis said, "We're looking for a solid performance."
What will plague Ellis' team — what plagues all short-track speedskaters, really — are the strict rules for passing and the high probability of landing bottom-first on the ice, sliding toward the wall.
Given the tight turns, and the fact that skaters are screaming along at speeds approaching 30 miles an hour, the tiniest mistake in position, momentum or edging can be disastrous.
And with so many skaters in such close quarters, hounding and sometimes bumping into each other, it's tough to follow all the rules.
If you jostle another skater, you're out. Passing on the outside is always legal, but you can only pass on the inside if the skater ahead of you straightens up, basically letting you through.
Case in point: In a semifinal race in the 1,500-meter race here in 1999, Ohno was disqualified. With seven laps to go in a 13 1/2 -lap race, he tried to pass a Japanese skater on the inside in close quarters.
As soon as he saw the skater alter his gait to accommodate him, he knew he had gotten too close.
It was a disheartening mistake but a good lesson for a young skater.
So much of short-track speedskating is about split-second timing and hair-splitting differences in distance.
Even the millimeters on a skate blade matter. The blades of all speedskaters are square-cut, with long-track skates about 1 millimeter thick and short-track skates slightly thicker. Figure-skate blades, in comparison, are 3 to 4 millimeters thick.
Skaters are meticulous in their preparations for a race. They file the blade bottom first, and then the sides, trying to create not only sharp corners but a tiny ridge of metal shavings, oriented toward the ice, so they can keep their edge.
The athletes also have tricks for mental sharpness — some of them rather odd.
Ohno yawned before every race when in Salt Lake that year, saying that it helped him relax, even though it made him look like he was bored.
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